Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hi,

I've been working on a spreadsheet with dates, quantities, and ratings in separate columns.

Decided to change the 'Default Date Format' from MM/DD/YY to DD/MM/YY instead and hit save without checking the document. I found to my horror that all quantities (0, 1, 2 etc.) were changed to random dates such as 12/30/99, 12/30/99, 01/01/00. Likewise for the ratings. I immediately tried to restore the document by editing the 'Default Date Format' back to MM/DD/YY but the strange dates that replaced my quantities and ratings remained. I'd really like to recover the information.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I think you set all of your cells to have a date format. The value 2 corresponds to the date 1/1/1900, which you are displaying as 01/01/00. Try selecting the cells that you do not want to be dates and then choosing the menu item Format -> Default Format.

I did that and it didn't work, but extrapolated from what you said and selected the cells columns, right-clicked and formatted the cells back to number instead of date. Yes! I'm so glad. Thanks so much for your help. Cheers x